103. I am here to perform corvee labor?

On the desolate mountain that meets the sky, over ten thousand entities, each roughly two to three meters tall, clad in black robes and wearing bamboo hats with green strips of cloth dangling from them, marched indifferently toward the summit.

These eerie beings were linked one after another, moving as a single entity. They not only looked identical, as if carved from the same mold, but their gait was perfectly synchronized. Yet, at the very end of this procession, there was a starkly discordant figure. This entity was short in stature; although wearing a bamboo hat, he was dressed in a Taoist robe, looking like a twelve or thirteen-year-old sword-carrying acolyte.

"These ghosts are too bizarre," said the brass oil lamp hanging at Chen Huangpi's waist, trembling with fear. "Perhaps after Yi Qingzhou's corpse fell into the Yin soil of the Yellow Springs, it transformed into something like this, eventually wandering into the human world. Now that you are wearing its hat, they mistake you for one of their own."

"But why would they bring you up the mountain?"

"It’s not that they are bringing me up," Chen Huangpi said, his face pale. "They were headed to the summit all along. I have no choice but to follow. I feel that if I were to leave, the Desolate Mountain would strike at me, and something terrible would happen."

Ever since he joined the line, it was as if he had truly returned to the fold; Chen Huangpi felt himself becoming a part of these ghastly things. The path beneath his feet was no longer a rugged mountain trail but a series of steps, each a meter high. As for those thin, eerie, and identical beings—let us call them "specters"—they were tall and slender. A one-meter step was nothing to them; they simply stepped over it. But for Chen Huangpi, the steps reached his waist. He had to crawl, using both hands and feet, just to keep pace.

Though the scenery of the Desolate Mountain had changed significantly since he joined the procession, looking up revealed the summit—shrouded in thick, dark clouds. It seemed as if one could pierce the clouds and see the sky from the top. However, this procession was not normal. Earlier, when Chen Huangpi slowed down just a fraction, the specter in front of him stopped. Even though it was shielded by the bamboo hat, Chen Huangpi could feel a suspicious gaze scrutinizing him. No words were exchanged, but he could tell the specter was wondering if something was wrong with this newcomer, or if a mistake had been made.

At that moment, Chen Huangpi stood frozen, bracing for a fight. But when those ten thousand suspicious gazes bore down on him, all thoughts of combat vanished. Regardless of whether these specters were, like Yi Qingzhou, the reanimated corpses of immortals, their mere gaze could ward off the mountain itself. They were unimaginably powerful and terrifying; they could snuff him out with ease. Thus, even as he crawled with hands and feet, Chen Huangpi dared not fall behind.

"Take it one step at a time," the brass oil lamp advised. "They recognize you by the hat. As long as you don't do something foolish and take it off, you should be fine."

Chen Huangpi was not wearing the skin of a Soul-Snatching Ghost, so these specters certainly did not recognize him as one of their own. The only possibility was that they recognized the hat, not the person—much like a bureaucracy that honors the seal rather than the individual.

"Perhaps after we reach the summit, they will bring me back down," Chen Huangpi gritted his teeth. "Once I leave this Desolate Mountain, I will surely shake them off."

Indeed, there is a profound terror in the face of life and death. When he climbed the mountain alone, he had given his all, but he had never fought for his life as desperately as he did now. Truly, only between life and death can a person's hidden potential be forced out. Within the *Book of Soul-Snatching*, the Soul-Snatching Ghost observed everything.

It watched, anxious at heart. Although Chen Huangpi was currently navigating the Desolate Mountain without incident—having been aided by a ferryman on a tributary of the Yellow Springs and now protected by this procession of specters—the Soul-Snatching Ghost could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. Did the ferryman know his master was extraordinary, and did these specters know it too?

Chen Huangpi did not know what the specters knew; he only knew he was dying—dying of exhaustion. Sweat drenched his Taoist robe, his arms were sore and felt as if they might snap, and his legs trembled incessantly. He had truly reached his limit.

"Chen Huangpi, don't stop! Keep climbing..."

"Huang Er, I really can't go on. I can't climb anymore," Chen Huangpi said despairingly. "I’ve never suffered like this in my life. No, I haven't lived long—I’m only eleven or twelve. I’m still a child."

"We've barely started and you're already giving up?" The brass oil lamp, seeing the procession of specters pause, shouted nervously. "Didn't you want to save the Temple Master? Didn't you say you would climb the Desolate Mountain? We've only been climbing for an hour, how can you be done already?"

"Where is your ambition?"

"These specters never stop! Even an iron-willed man couldn't endure this kind of torture," Chen Huangpi complained bitterly. If not for this procession, he could have maintained his own rhythm and surely made it to the top. But having to move his limbs constantly without a moment to rest or catch his breath was sheer agony.

The brass oil lamp felt a pang of pity. It knew Chen Huangpi had reached his limit. But if he fell behind now, the specters would surely attack. How could they stop? Suddenly, the lamp had an inspiration.

"Chen Huangpi, we're almost at the top! Push harder! I see plums at the summit."

"Really?" Chen Huangpi hurriedly looked up, but saw only dark clouds; there were no plums to be seen.

"Huang Er, where are the plums? You must be lying to me!"

"Your cultivation is still shallow; you lack the sharp eyes of my Nine-Underworld Divine Lamp. I see a vast orchard of plum trees. Each plum is the size of a hen's egg, weighing down the branches. You’ve eaten plums before, haven't you?"

"I have, of course. Tart and sweet, making one's mouth water."

As he spoke, Chen Huangpi felt his dry throat moisten and a surge of energy return to his body. "I must reach the summit; I must eat those plums."

A quarter of an hour later.

"Huang Er, I can't do it. I really can't."

"We're almost there, just a little longer! Oh, look, the summit doesn't just have plums, it has a spring! The water is bone-chillingly cold, right there in the plum grove."

Another quarter of an hour later.

"Huang Er, what else is at the summit?"

"There's a woman. A naked woman, bathing in the spring."

"What!" Chen Huangpi, gripping his knees and gasping for breath, felt a surge of killing intent in his eyes. "She’s gone too far! Does she expect me to drink her bathwater? Damnable! She must be killed!"

Another quarter of an hour later.

"Huang Er, what else is at the summit?"

"Nothing left. I can't make anything else up."

"No! You have to come up with something new, otherwise I really can't hold on."

Just then, the Soul-Snatching Ghost spoke up: "Master, no need to make anything up. We really are almost at the summit."

Hearing this, Chen Huangpi turned his head to look. Sure enough, the leader of the ten-thousand-strong procession had already reached the top. Half of its body sank into the dark clouds and vanished in an instant. Then the second... the third... the fourth... one after another, they followed suit, reaching the summit.

Chen Huangpi, at the very tail of the line, was now less than a hundred steps from the top.

Ninety-nine... ninety-eight... Chen Huangpi muttered the numbers in a daze. When he reached one, he suddenly snapped to attention. The specter in front of him had taken its final step onto the summit, most of its body swallowed by the clouds.

"Finally!" Chen Huangpi, without hesitation and filled with excitement, took that last step.

Beyond that step lay the open world. Beneath his feet was no longer a series of waist-high steps, but the flat ground of the summit.

"The air at this summit is truly sweet."

Chen Huangpi was young and his body had not yet fully developed. Unlike the specters, whose upper bodies were submerged in the clouds and required them to walk on tiptoe to reach, he stood on the ground. Still, taking a deep breath made him feel much better.

"In reality, the air here is not sweet at all; it is no different from the air at the foot of the mountain," the brass oil lamp shook, saying, "You only feel that way because you were so desperate to climb, obsessing over the pain and exhaustion, that your mind became clouded."

"It's your mind that's clouded!" Chen Huangpi snorted. "The Soul-Returning Jade is on this mountain; the air must be sweet."

As he spoke, Chen Huangpi followed the specter procession while scanning his surroundings. "Ghost, do you see the Soul-Returning Jade?"

"No, but it must be here. I can feel it; it seems to be right ahead."

As soon as he finished speaking, the entire procession stopped abruptly. Caught off guard, Chen Huangpi bumped into the specter ahead of him. The entity stopped instantly, and then Chen Huangpi saw the upper half of its body, hidden in the clouds, suddenly bend down toward him—as if its entire torso had folded in half. Within the green cloth strips, a pair of black-and-white blurred eyes stared at him with an eerie gaze.

It wasn't just this one. The entire procession had turned around, all of them staring at Chen Huangpi with that same unsettling look.

"Run!" Chen Huangpi felt his scalp tingle. Just as he was about to conjure black smoke to escape, he felt a weight on his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw a pale, dead hand gripping him tightly.

Then, with a violent tug, the specter pulled Chen Huangpi back. With a loud *whoosh*, the specter ripped open its tattered black robe, revealing its three-meter-tall, thin, and elongated torso. To Chen Huangpi's surprise, the body did not have the many hollow cavities seen in Yi Qingzhou's corpse; instead, it looked as if it were carved from stone, giving off an illusion of cold, rigid stiffness.

Furthermore, a pickaxe hung from the specter's waist. The specter grabbed the pickaxe with both hands, and without any visible effort, it split the tool into two, holding one in each hand. It then handed the extra pickaxe to Chen Huangpi.

"This is for me..."

Looking at this bizarre scene, Chen Huangpi instinctively took the pickaxe. Only then did he notice that all the specters were holding pickaxes and had begun digging into the ground. The specter that had given him the tool glanced at him impatiently, as if reminding him that it was time to clock in and get to work.

As Chen Huangpi started digging, he lamented inwardly, "Huang Er, you were right. The air here isn't sweet at all. I thought this procession of specters had saved me, but I didn't expect them to have saved me only to put me to work as a laborer, mining this mountain."

"What is there to dig for on the Desolate Mountain? Could it be that they're mining for the Soul-Returning Jade?"

"What else could that thing be for besides saving lives? Surely they aren't trying to forge a god."